Philosophy

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But I think the key difference between science and philosophy is that we need the results of science more than we need everyone in the body politic “doing science.” By contrast, we need everyone “doing philosophy” more than we need the results of philosophy. In other words, we don’t need to know or understand how the scientist has gone from the minute molecular intricacies of DNA to a public good like genetic counseling. On the other hand, the emulation of the critical thinking and logical argument of a philosopher is a virtue that can be applied to any area of life — from where you stand on the most important social and political issues of the day to how best to spend the rest of your days on this planet.

-- Steve Neumann, "Free the Philosophical Beast" at The New York Times

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Tennessee Williams

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My work is emotionally autobiographical. It has no relationship to the actual events of my life, but it reflects the emotional currents of my life. I try to work every day, because you have no refuge but writing. When you’re going through a period of unhappiness, a broken love affair, the death of someone you love, or some other disorder in your life, then you have no refuge but writing. ... Could you live without writing, baby? I couldn’t.

-- Tennessee Williams at The Paris Review

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High School

I did not wake up this morning with a dream, but upon my waking I found myself thinking about my South Dakota high school days. I have no idea what set it off, and I rather wish that it would never happen. My last two years of high school. What a horror! I was not able at the time to digest what was happening. I was sixteen, seventeen, and although I knew that I was cursed with this acne, I still thought I could have a good life and be as much a man as any. Such a fool!

I was thinking about some of the boys on the football team ((I even thought I was a jock)), and it occurred to me this morning, as if for the first time, that they were really good-looking guys. They could have been cast in a TV show about teenage life. Blond and handsome and tall, and so white. ((If I was one of them, Gabe would have come running across the south to jump into my bed. Of course, if I was one of them, my bed would have been full already, and I probably would not have been fucking around on Blurty.)) Welcome back to America, eh? Welcome to reality. I had hoped that it was just South Dakota, that I was just temporarily trapped in the backward hinterland. It took my full failure, and my returning from college to live my adult life with my parents, for me to get the number of the truck that ran me over. It wasn't simply South Dakota or high school. I was just too much injun to thrive in this civilization. A particularly beastly ugly little thing, too. I do not expect to ever fully come to terms with that cold reality, as I continue into my old age with this painful streak of denial in me. "This is not my life! It can't be my life." But I continue to live it, and I know that I will die in it, never having known any other kind of life.